Cravitz winced. His big brother Cash had burned up careers as a policy man, a dope man, a loan shark, and a hustler. He’d done time at Folsom, at Vacaville, and at Pelican Bay. For many of L.A.’s starry-eyed wannabes, he stank of money, power, and the streets. He was now in his fifties but still had the tastes and habits of a small-town hood.
“It’s your world, play-ah. S’up?” Cravitz said not very convincingly.
“Naw, you d’play-a, play-a,” Cash bellowed.
“What ya want?” Cravitz said.
“Y’boy Yip been here,” Cash said.
“Already?”
“Yep, he ran by early this morning. I was just gettin’ outta my breakfast meeting with Bennita and ’nem. The muthafucka was staring at Bennita like she was made outta cake.”
“How did he look?”
“Skeerd as a cat.”
“Scared?”
“Did I stutta?”
“You give him the keys to the place in La Caja?”
“He got ’em and gone.”
Cravitz breathed a sigh of relief.
“He didn’t leave that pretty gun, though. That Mexican ain’t dumb as he looks. Th’ chump oughta give it to me. Woulda been mines long time ago if I’da had my way.”
“I don’t know why Yip is so spooked.”
“And, honey, is he. Talkin’ freakish. Didn’t even sound like hissef,” Cash said, then added with an amused cackle, “Yip fuckin’ somebody’s wife?”
“Yip’s a choirboy.”
“Oh, he fuckin’ somebody’s boyfriend then. Somethin’ up,” Cash said, then dropped the subject. “When you comin’?”
“Now,” Cravitz said.
“Well then, c’mon, boy. I done took care of y’friend. Now I needs you t’ take care of some messy bi’ness, f’me.”
Cravitz knew his brother, a man of fixed habits, was taking his morning grits and waffles at the Chit Chat Room, his four-star Southern-style eatery in the mezzanine of the Château Rouge. He was feeling happy, frisky, and evil, and, as usual, trying to bum a little free labor.
“How messy?” Cravitz asked.
“Middlin’ messy, I figure,” Cash went on with a chuckle, “You remember Bingbong Jackson? You know, that piecea pimp I used to hang wit from Vegas?”
“Umhuh.”
Cravitz had a low opinion of Bingbong. He had won his distinctive moniker during childhood. Every time he tried to snatch the purse of some unsuspecting grandmother, he’d whack her in the mouth-bing!-but then she’d take her purse and clobber him with a haymaker-bong! Bingbong Jackson, whose real name was Ernest Grandvale Jackson IV, might have been the most low-rent, beat-up, wannabe hoodlum-pimp on the whole Left Coast.
“Well, he done hooked up with a pretty yella bitch name Bennita. They got a pad up in Vegas. They be staying at the Château Rouge f’Halloween. We gots a job f’you.”
“Bingbong Jackson ain’t done a sane act in his whole life,” Cravitz said darkly, “What’s that shitheel getting you into now?”
“They in th’ music bi’ness. Gots fo’, five little hoodlums from the projects with ’em,” Cash said thoughtfully, ignoring his brother’s rebuff. “Bingbong say these little thugs goin’ platinum. Some new kinda rap shit. Call theysef Fluboor, Flowbird… some shit like that.”
The Flo Boyz were a sensational new gangsta rap quartet out of Vegas. They were riding the crest of a publicity wave because of a violent spat they’d had with Strongbeach Posse, one of L.A.’s hot rap groups.
“I think this Bennita gonna let me smell her pussy if I book these boys on the main stage at Satin Dolls. They s’pose t’be th’ shit. Jes look like snotty-nose hoodlums t’me,” Cash went on. “Y’ wont me t’ send round the car?”
“Naw, play-ah,” Cravitz said wearily. “See ya at the Château.”
Cravitz rolled out in his ’56 T-Bird rather than the Escalade. The classic candy-apple sports car better suited his sly, nostalgic mood. Besides, the goddamn thing glittered like jewelry on the streets. He threw on his red T-Bone Walker T-shirt, his $2,000 snakeskin boots, and his favorite ragged jeans. The T-shirt slouched nicely over the big.45 Beretta he always carried, strapped on his left hip. He jetted down Stocker and when he hit Crenshaw, turned north to King.
Feeling suddenly impish, he slowed the roadster to a crawl and slouched low in his seat, kicking it old school with The Shirelles blasting on the box, like some vato Negro.
The Château Rouge, with Satin Dolls, its notorious adjoining bar, was situated on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard five blocks west of Crenshaw. It was a ten-story structure built in 1958 by renowned Los Angeles architect Paul Williams. Its façade was polished black marble, steel, and glass. It looked like a fat stack of bop records ready to be played. The whiteboy architectural critic for the Times in 1958 tried his best to dismiss it as “a licorice battleship.” But black folk loved its swank curvilinear forms.
The hotel’s main driveway was already bumper to bumper with fancy automobiles when Cravitz slid up-twenty patrons were lined up for the Chit Chat Room. It opened at 5 a.m. and featured the best and cheapest breakfast in town: two eggs, Louisiana sausage, bacon, grits, two biscuits, and a cup of java for five bucks. The menu also featured New Orleans seafood, chit’lins under glass, East Texas hot wings, smothered chops, ham hocks and brains, and Johnnie Walker Black.
For Halloween, all the valets and chauffeurs wore black satin masks along with their red satin togs. Darlinda Smalls, the valet captain, waved him to the front of the line.
“Us girls got something for you, Quick,” Darlinda said, and all the girls started singing Stevie’s version of “Happy Birthday.” When they were done, Aleta Wright, one of the fine-ass Château Rouge lady chauffeurs, took Cravitz’s keys. It was already eighty degrees and Aleta was dressed for the weather in the Château Rouge’s trademark peek-a-boo red satin tux.
“Hey, bitch!” a voice behind him growled.
Cravitz turned. Behind him stood a quartet of young men. One of them, a tall pasty-faced yella boy with bling braces, held up his fists and showed two sparkling rings, each one spanning a hand, spelling: FLO BOYZ.
Another brandished a sawed-off shotgun.
“Hey, Monster,” the pasty-faced boy said to the kid with the shotgun, “cover me.”
“What’s your name, son?” Cravitz said to the young thug with the gun.
“Monster P,” the boy said.
“That what your mama named you?”
“You betta recognize, grandpa, you jumped in line ahead of us,” the yella kid with bad acne replied. Monster P, huge and grinning, circled to his left. Cravitz noted that Monster wore his new $100 Lebron James sneakers untied.
“Well, bitch, you gonna move out th’ way? Or do we need to move you?” the pimply faced boy said.
“You from the Floorboards?” Cravitz said.
“Hey, sucka, you mean the Flo Boyz.”
Normally, a slap across the lips was his remedy for obstreperous brats. The challenge of his birthday vow, however, posed a dilemma for Cravitz.
Cravitz was pondering this when he heard, “Drop the weapon, Twinkletoes.”
It was the voice of his childhood hero, Ramon Yippie Calzone. Cravitz turned to see Yippie with Esmeralda in his hand.
Monster P held his shotgun limply, then let it slide to the ground.
“I’m saving your lives,” Yippie Calzone told them. He pointed to Cravitz. “That young brother there is one of the killin’est hombres on the whole damn planet. Just look at them cold, gray eyes… I’m a mutherfuckin’ killer, too. Just a few months back, shot down two little boys with this pretty gun. Ain’t that right, Quick?”
“Gospel,” Cravitz said.
The young men gawked at Esmeralda.
“We won’t kill you this time, boys,” Cravitz said. “But grown folks gotta talk now.” Cravitz gave Aleta a twenty and said, “Help my friends. I ain’t in a hurry.”